Monday, July 7

I'm helping a friend out with a museum installation job this month and it just so happens that the museum we are working on is located on the little island of Little Cayman in the Caribbean.  It's a tough life, I know.  Today we worked all day on site, came home for dinner, and then worked a little more from home; she has to write labels, and I'm sketching palm trees for a mural I'm painting this week.  The moon is waxing and casting a silvery white glow on the palm fronds as they bob in the breeze.  It is beautiful, but eventually it gets too dark for sketching to be a useful occupation, so we go inside where I watch The Muppet Movie and she...keeps writing labels.

The movie's over, I've changed for bed, and she's...still writing labels.  I feel bad.  There isn't much I can do to help, but maybe NOT watching a movie in the same room would have facilitated her creative juices, even if she said it was fine.  Sorry, Julia.

Well, I don't want to be all happily falling asleep while she is still working.  What to do, what to do?

It was raining just a bit ago; let me see what the weather is doing now.  Nights out here are beautiful and warm, and the moon is out.  I walk out onto our back porch.  No rain.  The clouds have moved on and the moon is on the other side of the sky.  I step out onto the beach and look up through the shadowy palms at the glowing half-circle.

Between blinks, I see a black shape swoop through the sky over the trees.  What was that?  Probably just a man-o-war bird.  We have a couple photographs of them at the museum and--wait, there it goes again.  They are surprisingly large creatures, and agile on the winds.  From what I've seen.

I scan the sky, wondering if this bird feels as restless as I do tonight.  On a night like this, there isn't much else to do but go to sleep and hope that morning will find me in a less twitchy mood.

I turn to head back inside when I hear a rush of wings behind me and catch the sight of a dark shape landing on the sand.  I whirl around to face it.  Much too big for a man-o-war.  Or any bird I've ever seen.  I feel rooted to the spot as the shadow unfurls itself, growing taller and taller, its wings settling into place on either side of a shape that gradually reveals itself to be human.  Well, not human, I think distantly; humans don't have wings.

My instinct is to stand still and silent, but fear leaps in my lungs as the creature walks straight toward me, unafraid.  And then it speaks.  He speaks.  He says my name.

"Alexandra."

My eyes widen as my mouth drops open, but no words come out.  How does he--it--know my name? He takes my hand--it is definitely a he--and I let him hold it in his strangely familiar grasp.  I can't dredge up the willpower to do anything more decisive than let myself stare.  Do I know him?  His eyes are so full, so piercing.  He smiles, and I see laughter and strength in his face.

Of course I don't know him; I've never met anyone with wings.  But I have to admit that if I don't know him, I surely want to.  My eyes can't get any wider, but my mouth forms some sort of disbelieving smile.

"Hi," I say.

And in the way that dates sometimes end in kisses even if you aren't sure, I end up in his arms, in the sky, with his dark wings pushing my lonely paradise away.

Friday, November 8

I finished nannying at noon today.  I wouldn't have usually worked today at all, but the parents needed some extra hours of help, and I didn't have anything else going on, so I figured I could help.  It felt good to leave, though.  I got on my poor old bike, thinking once again that I need to find my helmet in storage at home, and headed towards Davis Square, where I planned to buy a new headlight for my bike.

I like biking.  By the time I had passed Alewife I was warm despite the chill of the day.  I leaned into the curves around the park and crossed the street-that-isn't-really-a-street without stopping at the stop sign.  I swooped down the miniature slope and pushed up the tiny hill right before Mass Ave.  I saw the drainage gutter on the edge of the path too late to avoid it.  My back wheel hit the indentation in the pavement and slipped right out from under me, dead leaves swishing as I slid backwards down the embankment.  My head hit the ground as the bike flipped over me, and everything went dark.



A splitting headache pulled me back to consciousness.  Groaning, I blinked at the sudden light of the white afternoon sky.  The bike was still on top of me, back wheel still spinning just above my face.  I pushed it aside and tried to sit up, but the world spun and I quickly laid myself back down.  When I opened my eyes again, I cried out in surprise at seeing a little face peering quizzically into mine.  A tiny woman was hunched over me, staring down in amusement, and I hadn't heard her approach or crunch any leaves...  Her nose was so close to mine I couldn't move without pushing her out of the way, so I stared wide-eyed as she smiled and brushed my forehead with a pair of wrinkled hands.  Suddenly I wasn't dizzy any longer.  The little old lady turned quite abruptly and shuffled away, moving through the autumn debris with nary a sound.  I sat up and called out to her, but she was moving at a brisk pace, already several yards away, and didn't seem to hear.  And anyway, I was stunned into silence by the sight that greeted my eyes.  Tiny people bustled all around me, hip height and bundled against the cold.  They made no sound, though it looked as if a few of them were holding conversations with each other.  I sat there dumbfounded, up to my waist in golden leaves, staring at the streams of faerie people suddenly in my world.

"Hey, are you okay?"  A voice pulled me out of my amazement and I saw a full-sized person picking her way down the embankment.  She reached a hand out to me.  "It looks like you took a bad spill.  No helmet?"

I shook my head.  I looked around.  The little people took no notice of us except to flow around us on their way.

"I...I...I think I slipped," I muttered and put a hand to my head.  The headache was gone.  The faerie were still there.



It is evening now and I can still see them everywhere.  They don't acknowledge me.  They don't make a sound.  I wonder what jostled loose in my brain when I fell.
Tomorrow I'm buying myself a helmet.